LEST WE FORGET: MEMORIAL DAY 2011

American national holidays, with one exception, are celebrations. Christmas and Easter celebrate the birth and resurrection of our Lord and Savior. King Day celebrates Dr. King’s life and ministry. Presidents’ Day celebrates some presidents who deserve it and the rest, too. Independence Day celebrates just that. Labor and Veterans’ Days celebrate the hard work of all Americans and the service of those who took up the citizen’s greatest duty before returning to hearth and home. Thanksgiving Day celebrates and gives thanks for our bounty.

But one is different. Memorial Day is not a celebration as that word is understood today, although it is a celebration in the classic sense. It is the day on which we are supposed to stop and remember the men and women who, on far-flung battlefields, in fiery skies, and shell-splashed seas, gave all of their tomorrows for our today. They gave their everything that we could celebrate all the rest of the holidays.

Most of them were just kids. They had the same dreams that we did, but they never got to realize them. Instead, those dirty, tired, skinny men, pressed on into the cauldron of war. They did the job of giants, faithful to the end!

Some were the dog-faced infantry who stood and fought at Bunker Hill, Sharpsburg and Chickamauga, at San Juan Hill, at Chateau Thierry and the Marne. Some were gunners and pilots, high over Germany or Japan or Vietnam. Some were torpedomen and gunner’s mates and cooks and bakers on the 55 submarines “still on patrol.” Some were the Airborne who—to the everlasting glory of the infantry-- shivered and held at “the Bulge” or Rangers who “led the way” on the streets of Mogadishu. Most recently, they fell at Ramadi and in the cold mountains of Afghanistan.

A few were “Doc,” who died with them while ministering to their wounds at “bloody Omaha,” Iwo Jima, Chosin Reservoir and the Pusan perimeter. Others were “Padre,” such as Father Vincent Capodano, who died shielding a Marine with his body while praying with him.

And a fortunate few were Marines--riflemen-- God’s most magnificent creation. We are assured that, having served their time in the hell of Belleau Wood, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, the Reservoir, the Ashau Valley and the Arizona Territory , at the barracks in Beirut and in al Anbar, they are now on duty, guarding the streets of heaven until, in God’s good time, we are finally allowed to rejoin them. Semper Fideles!


Some still rest where they fell, while others made a final trip home to rest. Their gallantry and sacrifice ought be remembered every day, but it is not. So, on Monday, precisely at Noon, 21 minute guns will be fired on posts and stations across the world. Taps will be sounded, and at 1221, the flag will be once again two blocked after hanging at half-mast for the morning. And some of us, in our hearts and memories, will be with those men in those times.

I will ponder once again the beautiful words of Laurence Binyon’s To The Fallen:

They went with songs to the battle, they were young.
Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

Lest we forget. (And the people respond “Lest we forget.”)

MEMORIAL DAY 2009

It happened again.

I am in St. Louis for my niece’s graduation from high school. Last night at dinner, a waiter wished us a “happy Memorial Day.” My brother-in-law who was awarded a Silver Star and was a POW and I both cringed. It is not a happy day—it is a day of solemn remembrance of our comrades who died on the field of honor.

So, this weekend, please remember in prayer the families of our honored dead.

I will be traveling home tomorrow, but Lucas, Zimmerman, Tews, Unfried, Wandrow, Phipps, and Chip will be with me all the way.

LEST WE FORGET

Next Tuesday, 27 May, marks the 39th anniversary of the death of PFC Jimmy Wayne Phipps, USMC. It is fitting that it always comes in the week of, and every so often falls on, Memorial Day.

I first met Phipps (it is a Marine Corps tradition that enlisted men below the rank of Corporal are routinely addressed by their last names) in February 1969. He was a combat engineer attached to Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division. I was the platoon commander of 3rd Platoon, Charlie Company. An NVA sapper team had infiltrated the 5th Marines regimental combat base at An Hoa and had destroyed the ammunition dump. We were dispatched to try to find and destroy them.

As we secured a small ville northeast of An Hoa, I came upon a fighting hole at the perimeter of the village. It was complete with overhead cover. In other words, the hole was dug and then logs, earth and finally sod were put in place to camouflage it and to provide cover from artillery and mortar air bursts. It had to be destroyed.

Who should walk up but Phipps. “Watcha got, Lieutenant?” he asked.

I showed him and we agreed that a C-4 charge would do the job. C-4 is a clay-like white substance that is commonly referred to as “plastic explosive.” It came packaged in satchel charges made up of numerous plastic-wrapped quarter pound sticks. All you had to do was punch a hole in the plastic wrap, insert a blasting cap, fuse and fuse lighter, ignite the fuse lighter, and run like hell.

I had a quarter pound stick in my pack. (I had scrounged it to use it to heat my C-Rations.) Phipps had another two sticks. We agreed that that should probably do the job. I peeled the sticky tape on the back of each stick and put them together, while Phipps cut a piece of fuse, inserted and crimped it into a blasting cap and then crimped on a fuse lighter. He pulled the pin, set the charge in the back side of the hole, and we took off, yelling “Fire in the hole!”

We soon learned that in our inexperience, we had slightly overestimated the amount of C-4 we needed. The ground erupted, and I suspect that some of that bunker is still in orbit. The Skipper had a few choice comments, fatherly and memorable, about adding to his age, about our judgment, and the future location of our posteriors if we did it again. Thereafter, Phipps and I laughed about it every time we saw each other.

By April, he had finished his tour in the bush and returned to his parent unit, Bravo Company, 1st Engineer Battalion in Danang.

In mid-May, 1/5 waded the Song Thu Bon River and began a six week operation in what was known as the “Arizona Territory,” a low area of rice paddies and tree lines between the Song Thu Bon and the Song Vu Gia rivers. It was a free fire zone, meaning that non-combatants had been evacuated to a refugee camp and only bad guys were left. Of course, it didn’t work that way, because the peasant villagers insisted on returning to their ancestoral homes. Nonetheless, it was an area in which at least two NVA regiments were operating. It was a very bad place.

At around midnight on 26-27 May 1969, Charlie Company made one of its patented night moves to a small village and established a cordon around it. At first light, we entered the ville, rounded up the inhabitants for an id check, and searched the hooches for weapons and ordnance. We then dug in for the day.

Third Platoon was ordered to conduct the morning local security patrol out to about three clicks (kilometers). We would make sure that there were no enemy forces in the vicinity and also recon the area for that night’s move. We found a couple of dud mortar rounds which we destroyed with C-4.

In the last ville we entered, we found a dud 175mm artillery round sitting next to a hooch. It had obviously been moved there. We also found a rusted sheet of scrap tin covered with a chalk diagram used to teach machine gunners how to lead an American helicopter in order to shoot it down.

I called it in and we then rounded up all the villagers (old men, old women, young women and kids—no young men), and herded them back to our perimeter for air evacuation to the refugee camp. I told the Skipper about the dud. I had no more C-4, so he told me to note the location. I understood that he would send the afternoon security patrol out that way to finish it off.

As we were moving back to the Company, we saw the resupply helicopter land and then take off. As we entered our lines, I told the platoon sergeant to get our people set in and to get them to work on their holes. I headed for the command post.

As I walked up the gentle slope, there was Phipps, with his usual shy grin on his face. He had come out on the resupply bird.

“Phipps, what the hell are you doing here?" I asked.

“Aw, you know me, sir. Me an’ the First Sergeant didn’t see eye to eye. I ain’t cut out to be a garrison Marine, so I told him ‘For two cents, I’d go back out with my friends in Charlie Company.’ Here I am.”

By then, we were both laughing. “Well, c’mon along while I brief the Skipper, ‘cause I’ve got some business for you.”

That afternoon, my OCS Bunkie, Lieutenant Neal Meier, took 1st Platoon out on the patrol. Phipps went along. His Medal of Honor Citation tells the rest:

The President of the United States takes pride in presenting the MEDAL OF HONOR posthumously to

PRIVATE FIRST CLASS JIMMY W. PHIPPS
UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS

for service as set forth in the following CITATION:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as a combat Engineer with Company B, First Engineer Battalion, First Marine Division in connection with combat operations against the enemy in the Republic of Vietnam. On 27 May 1969, Private First Class Phipps was a member of a two-man combat engineer demolition team assigned to locate and destroy enemy artillery ordnance and concealed firing devices. After he had expended all of his explosives and blasting caps, Private First Class Phipps discovered a 175mm high explosive artillery round in a rice paddy. Suspecting that the enemy had attached at the artillery round to a secondary explosive device, he warned other Marines in the area to move to covered positions and prepared to destroy the round with a hand grenade. As he was attaching the hand grenade to a stake beside the artillery round, the fuse of the enemy's secondary explosive device ignited. Realizing that his assistant and the platoon commander were both within a few meters of him and that the imminent explosion could kill all three men, Private First Class Phipps grasped the hand grenade to his chest and dived forward to cover the enemy's explosive and the artillery round with his body, thereby shielding his companions from the detonation while absorbing the full and tremendous impact with his own body. Private First Class Phipp's indomitable courage, inspiring initiative and selfless devotion to duty saved the lives of two Marines and upheld the highest traditions of the Marine Corps and the United States Naval Service. He gallantly gave his life for his country.

/S/ RICHARD M. NIXON

Jimmy Wayne Phipps was 18 years, six month and 26 days old, the third youngest Marine to be awared the Medal of Honor in Vietnam. His name appears on the Vietnam War Memorial, Panel 23W at line 2. Phipps Hall at Marine Corps Base, Quantico is named in his honor.

The Marine’s Hymn assures us that the streets of Heaven are guarded by United States Marines. If so, I pray that the ultimate Sergeant of the Guard has given Phipps a special liberty for eternity.

Semper Fidelis

MEMORIAL DAY 2008

And it rolls around once more. Memorial Day 2008 is but a week away.

And once again we will be bombarded with articles about the start of the “summer retail season,” advertisements for “GIANT Memorial Day Sale,” and a page in many newspapers for memorial messages, remembering Great Aunt Sadie or Cousin John’s fatal fishing accident. Almost assuredly, someone will wish me a “Happy Memorial Day,” confusing it with Veterans’ Day.

And I will grit my teeth and march on. Memorial Day is not about sales and Sales. It is a day on which we remember our honored dead who have given their all for our Nation. For some privileged few of us, it is the special day the Nation remembers those of whom we think every day: the men we were with when we forever put away our youth and became warriors and a band of brothers.

“They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.”

For the Fallen by Laurence Binyon (1914)

In Henry V, Shakespeare’s portrayal of “Harry the King” lays out what for the combat veteran is the true meaning of Memorial Day.

We would not die in that man's company
That fears his fellowship to die with us.
This day is call'd the feast of Crispian.
He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam'd,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbours,
And say 'To-morrow is Saint Crispian.'
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say 'These wounds I had on Crispian's day.'
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he'll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words-
Harry the King, Bedford and Exeter,
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Gloucester-
Be in their flowing cups freshly rememb'red.
This story shall the good man teach his son;
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

In Vietnam, my 18 year old radio operator, himself a poet, once told me, “Remember their names, Lieutenant. They ain’t really dead so long as we remember their names.” Here, then, are my names:

Classmates from Basic Class 12-68

2dLt Charles “Chip” Pilkington, USMCR
2dLt James “Jay” Simms, USMCR
2dLt Mike McCormick, USMCR
2dLt Mike Quinn, USMCR
2dLt Roy Phillips, USMCR
2dLt Bob Christian, USMCR

From Company C, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division ("The Old Breed")

2dLt Fred Andrew Hartman, Jr. USMCR (Chip was also in BC 12-68)
PFC Don Lucas, USMC
PFC Rich Zimmerman, USMC
LCpl Ernie Tews, USMC
PFC Jimmy Phipps, USMC (Medal of Honor) (Phipps was a combat engineer from Bravo Company, 1st Engineer Battalion, attached to Charlie Company 1/5 at the time of his gallant sacrifice.)
LCpl Barry Unfried, USMC
PFC Jimmy Wandro, USMC

At the going down of the sun and in the morning, indeed . . . Semper Fidelis..